Posts tagged diapers

I’ve been in a daze consisting of getting very little sleep and nursing and changing a trillion diapers. I am not even kidding. In the past two weeks, we’ve gone through so many diapers that I could totally build an igloo out of all the ones we’ve used. Except not really, because who wants to live in a diaper igloo that smells like baby poop and pee?

We have some really awesome cloth diapers, except we can’t use them until John’s bowels kinda regulate somewhat. He’s going through about 15-20 diapers a day right now, and this mama doesn’t have the time or energy to wash that many cloth diapers at the moment. I figure once he’s around 4-6 weeks old or thereabouts, we’ll make the switch then.

This baby has the craziest poop habits. He’ll go a few hours without dirtying a diaper. And then he’ll pee. No problem, right? Simple little pee. Just need to change it. So I’ll get him all changed and stuff and then BAM! He poops in the clean diaper. And so I’ll go through the process of unswaddling him & undressing him, get him changed and redressed and reswaddled and WHAM! Another poop in the clean diaper. I’ll wait a couple minutes and move his legs around to get any more poop out. When nothing happens, I again go through the process of unswaddling him and undressing him. I change the diaper, but this time I don’t get the clean one on fast enough and he showers me with pee. So I’ll finally get a clean diaper on him, turn my head, and yep… he’ll pee again.

He is a peeing and pooping MACHINE.

We’ll go through 6-8 diapers in a row because of this. I’m looking forward to his little bowels getting more regular because it’s rough to spend 30 minute increments just changing one diaper after another. My sweet baby. I plan on reminding him of this when he’s older…

See, we’ve been “going to the potty” for a couple of months now, but it’s been slow. At first, he would only sit on his potty fully clothed. Then I coaxed him into sitting on it clad only in his diaper. It’s only recently that he’s begrudgingly allowed me to remove the diaper while he sits on the potty. Even then, I apparently have horrible timing. I’d have him sit on his potty while I read a book to him, but he would never go. There was one time that I pulled his pants up without a diaper so we could wash his hands before I put a fresh diaper on him, and he peed in his pants. Ten seconds after I got him off his potty. Figures. Anyway, we’ve not been having much luck with the process.

But yesterday when he woke up from his nap, his diaper was completely dry. I quickly ushered him into the bathroom to sit on his potty. After about 2-3 minutes… TA DA! HE PEED!

The look on his face was priceless.

I was so excited that as soon as he was done, I jumped up and down and did a little dance, shouting “Hooray! Hooray!” Paul came to the bathroom to see what all the commotion was about. When I told him about Nathan’s accomplishment, he praised Nathan for being a big boy. After I got Nathan’s diaper back on, Paul scooped him up and did a little dance, swinging him in his arms.

It was glorious.

Now to get Nathan to use his potty consistently and without me prompting. That’ll be nice. This is definitely a long process, much longer than I thought it would be. I hear some kids are really easy to potty train, but others? Not so much. I don’t make a huge deal out of it, though, because then Nathan would totally do the exact opposite. We’re just going at Nathan’s pace and I keep telling myself he won’t be in diapers forever. Just taking it one step at a time.

I had to change Nathan’s diaper, and as I was getting his pants off, my fingers slid across what felt like a thousand boogers on his leg. Flummoxed, I pulled my up my hand and upon closer inspection, it looked sorta like there was caviar on it.

Only it wasn’t caviar.

Oh how I wish it had been caviar.

Wondering what this booger-like stuff was and where it was coming from, I examined Nathan’s diaper and noticed it had a 4″ rip in the side. When I peered inside this anomaly, I noticed that apparently, the stuff they use to absorb the pee looks like little tiny gel pellets once it comes in contact with liquid.

The liquid these pellets were swelled with was URINE.

So I had little squishy, yellow, booger-like pee-pellets all over my hand. And on his leg, too. I looked around and noticed that the pee pellets were all over the bedroom floor. I felt my heart drop into my stomach as my eyes roamed from the bedroom floor to the kitchen floor. There were pee pellets everywhere. Perhaps MILLIONS OF THEM. Glistening, shiny, and swollen with pale yellow urine. In the kitchen. In the living room. In the recliner that’s in the living room. And in fact, there was a little PILE of shimmering pee pellets ON THE RECLINER. Like Nathan had taken a dump and instead of leaving poop, he left pee pellets.

There were pee pellets EVERYWHERE.

And as I walked from his bedroom and into the kitchen, I stepped on them. Barefoot. I was walking on little balls of urine. I could feel them squishing coldly under my feet. It was a very unpleasant sensation and it felt very much how I imagine walking on dead baby jellyfish might feel like.

Even worse than the aquatic mental imagery was that we couldn’t just haul out the vacuum and vacuum it up because WHO WANTS A PEE IN THEIR VACUUM? Not me. So we had to go around and manually pick up Nathan’s little balls of pee with our bare hands.

So. We won’t be buying that particular brand diaper anymore, that’s for sure. Because picking up someone’s pee pellets just ONCE in a lifetime is one time too many.

I have successfully (for the most part) taught Nathan how to clean up. For instance, remember how he loves to get into his diapers and toss them around the room? Well, he still does it. Only now, I tell him that the consequence of throwing his diapers all over the place is that he has to clean it all up. And he does. Well, sometimes I have to help by handing him a diaper or two, but he puts all the diapers back in their container. Once I was helping him stack the diapers into three rows, and the first and second rows were completed. As I was working on the third row, Nathan started taking diapers out of the first and second rows and stacked them into the third row. Conscientiousness is a virtue!

He’s also cleaning up his toys quite well. Sometimes he balks when it’s time to clean up, but he still puts his toys away, even with little tears in his eyes. I tell him he should be so proud of himself because I understand how hard it is to put things away when you still want to play with them. (Believe me, I quite vividly remember the feeling!) And he loves giving things to Mommy. When he picks up something he’s not supposed to play with, I say “Give it to Mommy, please,” and he’ll toddler over as fast as his little legs will go and dramatically thrust said object at me.

I am enjoying these little moments while I can. I hear it won’t be long before he’s back-talking and refusing to do anything I ask!